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Monday, December 24, 2012

Our Demolition of MGK: One Year On

Author: Jonathan Harrison

By HC Guest Blogger

In December 2011, this blog published a lengthy
critique of three books authored by the sole remaining semi-serious researchers
on the Holocaust denial scene, Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf and Thomas Kues. The
project evolved from a failed attempt in July 2009 to organise a formal debate
on the Aktion Reinhard camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka at the old RODOH
forum.[1] As we
noted at the time, and observed in the critique, the denier scene had become
more and more obsessed with Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka this side of the
millennium, and so the Reinhard camps seemed to be a suitable subject for a
proper debate along the lines of the RODOH 'Scholars’ Debate' on Auschwitz in 2004.[2]. The
failure of ‘revisionists’ to muster a debate team wasn’t entirely unexpected,
given the reluctance that deniers have to ever allow themselves to be pinned
down and actually defend an argument properly. So we decided instead to
scrutinise the arguments of what we thought were the organ-grinders, instead of
cleaning up the poo flung by monkeys on the internet.

Our motives for doing so were not because we
felt that MGK’s work in their ‘trilogy’ on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka
represented a serious threat or challenge to the conventional understanding of
the Holocaust. Indeed, over the course of the project, we felt that Holocaust
denial had slipped down another notch towards complete irrelevance, as despite
the ready availability of negationist material on the internet, the denier
scene did not seem to be growing in a meaningful or significant fashion, while
a new generation of ‘revisionist’ researchers failed to emerge.[3]In the time we spent working on the project,
it became clear that deniers were failing utterly to convince others of the
validity of their ideas when proselytising on the internet, as seen time and
again at the James Randi Education Foundation forum (among many other venues on
the web).One of the original reasons
for the establishment of the Holocaust Controversies blog was to provide
rebuttals and counters to arguments advanced on the internet by deniers, and
while we undoubtedly have helped provide ammunition to others for that purpose,
the antics and tactics of intenet deniers had become entirely self-refuting and
self-discrediting.[4]
It also became less and less necessary to refute MGK’s work, because it was
simply not being widely read or cited by internet deniers, who have largely
preferred to spam video links and repeat hoary old cliches from the 1980s and
1990s instead. Although denier literature has long functioned more as a
talisman than a repository of actual ideas, this kind of superficial engagement
with their own literature has become
near-universal among internet deniers, as a scan of CODOH forum reveals. In
this regard, Holocaust denial is little different to any other fringe belief,
conspiracy theory or form of pseudoscience that has been presented on the
internet in the age of Web 2.0. The 9/11 Truth Movement, for example, has
produced a series of books authored by its ‘gurus’, along with a slew of
websites and YouTube videos, yet discussion of David Ray Griffin’s work is thin
to nonexistent on the internet. If even aficionados cannot summarise and debate
the arguments of crank gurus coherently, then it’s little surprise that the
rest of the world ignores those gurus.

We therefore undertook our critique of MGK’s
work in the same spirit as Ryan Mackey approached his critique of David Ray
Griffin’s Debunking 9/11 Debunking[5], namely
to dissect the fallacious reasoning and methods used by fringe pseudoscholars
as an exercise in its own right, and to simultaneously provide a handy resource
for interested readers to learn something more about the history of the
Holocaust and the Aktion Reinhard camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. Like
Mackey, we have often referred to our critique as a white paper – for that is
what it is, a work put out relatively informally for discussion in electronic
format as a PDF. Judged against the goals we set ourselves, the critique has
succeeded better than we originally expected. Downloads, accesses, views and
hits across the various websites where it is hosted have been strong, and
continue to tick upwards, since the white paper evidently googles fairly well.

Feedback from readers and colleagues has been very positive. We also know the
critique has found use on university courses, and will be cited in forthcoming
German publications. Based on this feedback, our critique is evidently valued
for its summary of information regarding the Reinhard camps and the Holocaust,
and that is something we intend to bear in mind as we contemplate revising the
white paper for a second edition.

Unlike Ryan Mackey, who never received a peep in reply from David Ray Griffin to his criticisms of Griffin’s fallacious reasoning, the authors of the critique have known since this January that the targets of the critique intended to respond. Jürgen Graf emailed us on January 4, 2012 to confirm this, and then started issuing ever more pompously phrased ‘communiques’ to announce successive delays to their response. In March of this year, MGK declared that they would respond with the “steam roller method”, addressing “all major arguments”.[6] After
announcing a delay in August to “late autumn” due to issues with translating
Mattogno’s contributions and reviewing news of further archaeological
investigations at Sobibor[7], MGK
have now declared that their response is “complete”, barring a single chapter
left to be translated, and thiswill
supposedly appear in January, at a length of 800 pages.[8]

This news caused us to fall off our chairs
laughing when we realised that our targets had gone to such lengths. Our
critique ran to 571 A4 pages in order to tackle three books that together total
942 pages in book form, amounting to 350,000 words versus our 250,000 words.
While we wrote a lot and covered a lot of ground, we consciously aimed to
undershoot their combined wordcount, and succeeded in this. For MGK to write
800 pages in response is a defeat in itself, not least because it confirms our
claim that no conventional publisher would ever touch their material unless it
was properly edited down. As we demonstrated repeatedly in the critique,
Mattogno’s contributions to the ‘trilogy’ on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka
frequently recycled articles and chapters drafted for his earlier works,
sometimes dating back as far as the mid-1980s. This cut-and-paste writing style
is a hallmark of his entire oeuvre; Mattogno has a strong tendency to repeat
himself. If the 800 pages in response to us turn out to consist of a string of
cut-and-pasted excerpts from other articles and books, then that will be a
virtually automatic fail for them. Similarly, if we find that the 800 pages are
little more than a fisking of quoted excerpts from our critique, we will be
equally unimpressed. If it turns out that we have provoked them into finally
engaging with material they should have included in the original books, then
MGK will also have failed, because our basic argument regarding their work was that it failed to meet accepted scholarly
standards and inadequately addressed both the primary sources as well as
secondary literature relevant to the subject of the Reinhard camps. Shutting
the stable door after the horse has bolted will simply confirm our view that
their work hitherto has been irrelevant drivel.

Just as amusing to us has been the fist-shaking
that has accompanied MGK’s communiques. In March, they informed us that “after the publication of our reply we will
not have the slightest obligation to pay any further attention to anything MM.
Harrison, Mühlenkamp, Myers, Romanov and Terry might publish in the future.”[9]
In August, they claimed that the delay meant we would “have to wait until late
autumn before experiencing the pleasure of being utterly humiliated and
unmasked for what they are.”[10]

These
statements are extremely curious, because they betray a fundamental lack of
understanding of what is at stake here. For starters, the revisionist
predilection for unwarranted victory-dances makes it somewhat unlikely that we
would indeed feel “humiliated”, as time and again denier claims have shown only
the most tenuous grasp on reality. This would, by the way, include MGK
endorsing the psychotic drivel of Carmelo Lisciotto that now besmirches the
once respected amateur history website deathcamps.org. Unfortunately, Carlo
Mattogno has already done just that in his latest screed Schiffbruch[11], which makes us wonder whether he really comprehends what is actually going on.
It’s rather simple: you guys put out your work, other people have the right to
criticise it, who they are is actually irrelevant. The same goes for access:
you guys have the right to put out your crap through whatever website you like,
and people can find it via google just the same as other people can find our
stuff.

The
authors of the critique could care less whether MGK respond to whatever might
be written in the future individually, collaboratively or collectively by the
five contributors, since they have manifestly ignored so much of what was
written by us before, and because
they have time and again demonstrated a woeful grasp of the conventional
historiography of the Holocaust. This is not, and never has been, a proper
dialogue. If it were, then MGK would have submitted themselves to proper peer
review and tried to publish their work in conventional outlets, whereupon a
scholarly audience might have felt obliged to engage with their ideas to a
greater extent. But they have avoided this obvious route, and thus their work
is put out via the extreme-right, antisemitic and conspiracist Barnes Review, a
small press with a corresponding lack of intellectual credibility. It may have
escaped MGK’s notice, but the white paper, and the preceding HC blog posts
criticising them, are essentially the only
response their work on the Reinhard camps has had from anyone in the
mainstream, indeed we have given them what is unequivocally the major response
to any of their work. From every
other quarter, the reaction to the ‘trilogy’ has been a deafening silence.

In one
sense, all we have done is inform MGK of the inevitable reaction their work
would receive if it was reviewed by academics, especially historians, and not
just historians of the Holocaust. To our knowledge, all three of MGK have
masters’ degrees in languages and literature, perhaps with minors in other
subjects. None of them seem even vaguely familiar with the academic world as it
actually exists, yet the three revisionist gurus have spent up to 27 years
supposedly addressing academic historians, and lately also archaeologists, in
an attempt to be be taken seriously by them, without reaping any serious
response. Insanity, as they say, is doing the same thing over and over, and
expecting a different result.

Three of
the critique contributors currently work in academia, the others are interested
amateurs; we have been trained in history, sociology and the law among other
subjects. Three out of five contributors are Anglo-Americans, and thus
intimately familiar with the intellectual and academic culture of what is
surely the biggest market for MGK’s work. Our verdict that MGK’s work is shoddy
pseudoscholarship rests not only on
our familiarity with academic research into the Third Reich and Holocaust but also on our disciplinary training
and knowledge of comparable fields in modern history and other subjects. Not
one historian, no matter what their specialism, in a research university
whether in Britain, America or anywhere else in the world would regard MGK’s
work as satisfactory scholarship or be convinced by their arguments.

This has
nothing to do with political correctness or censorship, but everything to do
with some bottom-line issues that MGK might try to remember when putting the
finishing touches to their response. The first is presentational: we really
hate to say it, but your books and articles simply look like the works of amateur cranks. In the critique, we chided
you for the excessive use of verbatim quotations, something which is quite
seriously frowned on in academia, not least because fair use limits the length
of citations from secondary works, and because the full or excerpted
reproduction of sources is traditionally done in appendices or document
collections. This is because there are word
limits out there in the real world imposed by journals and publishers.
Stringing together verbatim quotes of excessive length is the kind of thing
shocked out of first year undergraduates by any self-respecting university
teacher through awarding a below-par mark. If you have cured yourself of this
irritating quirk, then all the better, but it doesn’t, unfortunately, stop
there. Perhaps one of MGK should take down a history book written by an
Anglo-American author off their shelves – we are sure you must own at least one
– and report back to the others whether British or American historians, indeed
British or American academic writers in any of the humanities or social
sciences, sub-section their books and articles to death as you do. Guess what?
They don’t. Even those used to German academic prose find your 7.3.3.1
micro-sectioning to be an abomination, and to seriously break up the coherence
of an argument. We understand that you believe this makes your work look
scientific, but all it does is stamp ‘pseudoscience’ over your prose in the
eyes of Brits and Americans.

The second
issue is much more substantive, and concerns the balance between ‘negationist’
and ‘affirmationist’ revisionism. The simple fact is that Holocaust denial will
never be taken seriously until it ponies up hard evidence and substantiates its
claims, either proving an alternative explanation (like ‘resettlement’) or
proving the claims of fabrication advanced by revisionists. As long as neither
‘resettlement’ nor the ‘hoax’ are proven, then all the nitpicking and fussing
over the evidence for Nazi extermination will remain fundamentally irrelevant,
since pure negationism will never, ever convince a wider audience than the
boutique readership you currently have. Attacking an opposing view while
failing to substantiate your own claims sticks out like a sore thumb to the
overwhelming majority of intelligent readers, not least because of the blatant
evidentiary double standards on display, as well as its fallaciousness.

Only two
things might genuinely revise the
historical record, namely proof of survival or proof of
fabrication/manipulation of the evidence for mass murder. Neither redefining standards of evidence or claiming technical impossibility
actually provide even a glimmer of an answer to a series of obvious questions.
If the Jews were not killed, what happened to them? However vague and nonsensical,
attempts to prove survival or prove the ‘resettlement thesis’ at least purport
to answer this question. Declarations of physical impossibility, by contrast,
do not, any more than the goalpost-moving routine of unilaterally rewriting the
conventional rules of evidence to suit negationists would provide an answer.
The question “what happened to the Jews of Europe during the Second World War?”
cannot be answered with the reply “there were no gas chambers”. Such a mantra
is both semantically and logically insufficient as a response. The lack of a
coherent, thoroughly proven answer to the question “what happened then?” is the main reason why revisionism remains
utterly marginalised in both academia and the public sphere. The
pure-negationist strategies, moreover, also fail to explain how the evidence
for mass murder and extermination came into being. If there were no gas
chambers, who came up with the idea, at what time and why? And where is the
proof for all of this?

Thirdly, the sad reality – for MGK –is that we have become thoroughly bored with denialist tactics in this day
and age. However much they might reject the comparisons, negationist tactics
have been so thoroughly abused by creationists, 9/11 Truthers, Birthers, Moon
Hoaxers, JFK assassination conspiracy theorists and all manner of other
assorted lunatics in the age of Web 2.0 that revisionists damn themselves by
association and analogy whenever they resort to them. Many find negationist
nitpicking and fussing over mass graves and the like to be tedious and
ghoulish. Most can see through the obfuscation and deliberate dragging out of
the argument, since it is now well established that it is child’s play for a
crank to refuse to be convinced, shift burden of proof, argue from ignorance or
dwell on irrelevant minutiae. The negationist strategy of picking apart
individual pieces of evidence in splendid isolation from each other also fails
to demonstrate that the convoluted interpretations hang together. It is also
exceedingly weak and cumbersome, since there is nothing to stop everyone else
combining sources into an explanation or narrative, as is quite obviously the norm in how history is practiced and
written.

Should MGK wish to persist with negationism,
then they will have to do a lot more to justify this approach. Indeed, a common
reaction to denier arguments is that if generalised across the whole of
history, then much of the historical record would disappear in a puff of smoke.
While negationism has an unspoken epistemology and methodology, it is a major
flaw in the revisionist belief system that its gurus like MGK seem unable to
relate this epistemology and methodology to accepted philosophical, theoretical
or practical models, and have never coherently elaborated the ‘revisionist
method’. Worse still, MGK like other deniers consistently refuse to test their
epistemology and methodology on other historical events properly and systematically,
and thus fail to establish that there is anything unusual, incorrect or invalid
in how historians of the Holocaust have approached the evidence for Nazi
genocide. This refusal to compare almost single-handedly destroys the validity
of revisionist arguments.

When we began the critique project, we were of
course fully aware of past ‘exchanges’ between deniers and their critics, such
as occurred between Richard Green of the Holocaust History Project and Germar
Rudolf.It was never our intention to
engage in tit-for-tat dialogue as a collective, although individual contributors
may well respond to future MGK writings as they see fit. It is, however, our
intention to release a revised 2nd edition in 2013, correcting
various typos and glitches, and possibly adding an afterword. Thereafter, the
critique team will disband once more. While we have all enjoyed our contributions
to HC blog, several of us have quite simply, moved on, with others not involved
in the drafting of the critique taking our place on the roster of HC blog
contributors. We do not hold to the ‘last man standing’ theory of pseudo-debate
seen on the internet in so many places. We are, in fact, quite sure that MGK
will be churning out their screeds for years to come, and just as sure that
such screeds will continue to have zero impact on serious scholarship. Some of
us have done academic work on the history of Holocaust denial, and may continue
to publish academically on that subject, while some will be publishing on the
history of the Holocaust, and will be dealing with MGK only to the extent that
they might be considered names in the history of the post-1945 phenomenon of
negationism. We concur with MGK that after the publication of the revised edition of the critique, we will not have
the slightest obligation as historians of the Holocaust to pay any further
attention to anything Signore Mattogno, Herr Graf and Herr Kues might publish
in the future.

[1]http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.pt/2009/07/real-open-debate-on-aktion-reinhard.html[2]http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/real-open-debate-on-aktion-reinhard.html. The 'Scholars' Debate' is currently under reconstruction (http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.pt/2012/10/reconstructing-scholars-debate-about.html).[3] See the interview with one of the co-authors of the critique
appearing as ‘Holocaust denial in decline, says historian’, The Jewish
Chronicle, 7 October 2010, http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/39171/holocaust-denial-decline-says-historian[4]For an eloquent example of the frustration felt by non-deniers when
listening to negationist claims, see the post by‘Horatius’ in the thread ‘Holocaust
denial videos’, 19th August 2009, http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5021659&postcount=148[5] Ryan Mackey,‘On Debunking
9/11 Debunking’ at https://sites.google.com/site/911guide/ryanmackey[6]http://revblog.codoh.com/2012/03/communique-on-our-response-to-holocaust-denial-and-operation-reinhard/#more-1776[7]http://revblog.codoh.com/2012/08/second-communique/[8] http://revblog.codoh.com/2012/12/third-communique/[9] http://revblog.codoh.com/2012/03/communique-on-our-response-to-holocaust-denial-and-operation-reinhard/#more-1776[10]http://revblog.codoh.com/2012/08/second-communique/[11] Carlo Mattogno, Schiffbruch.
Vom Untergang der Holocaust-Orthodoxie. Uckfield: Castle Hill Publishers,
2011, p.271.

23 comments:

"Indeed, over the course of the project, we felt that Holocaust denial had slipped down another notch towards complete irrelevance, as despite the ready availability of negationist material on the internet, the denier scene did not seem to be growing in a meaningful or significant fashion [...]"

This guy must be blind. You loose believers on a daily basis all over the world!However, keep trying to attract new ones - you're certainly going to be needing new 'recruits' because this belief of yours is going down, for better or worse!

«This guy must be blind. You loose believers on a daily basis all over the world!However, keep trying to attract new ones - you're certainly going to be needing new 'recruits' because this belief of yours is going down, for better or worse!»

A showpiece of self-projection from Mr. Andersson, who seems to think that established historiography is a movement like "Revisionism", which strives to attract "recruits" and depends on believers.

Since I started opposing "Revisionism" I have come across several persons, including one of my co-bloggers, who have turned their backs on "Revisionist" BS. But I don't remember having witnessed anyone becoming a "Revisionist".

Yeah, and I know who you're talking about too, and that guy never even was a holocaust revisionist in the first place. Good try, though, my beloved RoboCop.You speak of the Hurenco$t as being established historiography. And to a large degree that statement may be somewhat true, although, you must confess, the stories that makes this gigantic Hurenco$t are at most flimsy and the directions it takes are more fluid rather than fixed.Holocaust revisionism is not a movement. You clearly need to get your definitions right, RoboCop.WELL, I've seen plenty of persons leaving the HurenHoax faith (i.e your beloved "holocaust") and never looked back. Remember, my faithful RoboCop, I too used to believe in your horseshit.

By the way: please don't attach names to this author that does not belong to him. You can complain about "RoboCopy" and I'll remove it.

PS.The next time you engage in debate where your voice must be used - please try to not sound so slimy. You sound like a paedophile or some dirty old sex addict. Or just plain sick.Weren't it you and your friends who constantly raked down on Denierbuddy's voice? Ha! Now we've heard yours and it sure isn't sweet.

Yeah, I know who I'm talking about. Jonathan Andersson aka "k0nsl" aka "Franz Holtzhäuser", a "Revisionist" hollow-head from Sweden who feebly tries to make up for his utter lack of arguments with obviously self-projecting inane verbosity (or verbose inanity, if you prefer), as exemplified in his latest "Franz Holtzhäuser" post.

Wow, you can almost use proper English, dear. You've only had a life-time of practice! Not bad at all.Now try to learn to talk proper English in your next debate, makes for better understanding, see?Well, as I said; I know who you're talking 'bout too, and that guy never was a revisionist to begin with, however, saying so makes your propaganda a tad bit easier for someone uninitiated to swallow. I suppose.However saying such a thing, knowing fully well that to be a lie, is dishonest to say the least!

I don't get you Roberta, not at all! At the end of the week, and sometimes longer, but also considerably shorter too, at times, you have the energy of a True HC-Blowhard Cut 'n Paster but then your energy shrinks back to its original state (sort of like that 'gas chamber' at Auschwitz I).I always wondered why that is so? My guess is that you supply of Lyrica is either fully gone and thus you're waiting for new prescription, or you're just depressed. Sure the latter can happen to anyone whilst the former hopefully doesn't happen to most people.Overdosing on pills is never good. Eat them as prescribed and keep your energy for the full 14 days - or whatever interval you get your prescriptions.Hey, just a friendly advice Roeberta.

I just read the "demolition of MGK" book downloaded from www.libgen.org and I thought it was really excellent. I'm researching Nazi religious and metaphysical ideology and its role in the genocide, so I know how much work you have put into that book. It's really heroic.

I have no problems with my manly traits.One more day, Roerberta. Sweeet, huh.

So, let's see here. You've attributed a false name to me for, let's see here, almost a decade. A male name. So what does that suggest of your own effeminacy, Roberta?To be fair; Roberta / Roerberta has been a nickname of yours for years. It was given to you by Claudia Rothenbach. Cherish it, nappy-face.

I must have hit "Franz" on one of his raw nerves, judging by a response that is as lame and self-defeating as it is hysterical. The first sentence is already further evidence that the moron has the problems he professes not to have, for why else would he feel the need to make this affirmation?

"Claudia Rothenbach" seems to have also been a male, by the way. "Franz" is in good company.

Oh but you're wrong as per usual, Roberta, I'm in fine, fine company. See.Nothing hysterical here. You're probably a bit blurry by now, I figure. Good one, RoboCop. Sit it out and tomorrow you'll be spewing words like a parrot, but with more finesse.Hope you're having a really foul day!

Well if that hole becomes any more deeper I'm probably going to die and then we have a Holtzcaust on our hands and you're the perpetrator and will be sitting in the dock in Copenhagen and sentenced to death by being stuffed full of skipperlabskovs until you expire.So think before you do something. Do you REALLY want to have a Holtzcau$t on your conscience? Oh, sorry, forgot! You don't have a friggin' conscience.